She sets about doing the dishwashing, with her daughter Claudia by her side. When a game is over, Ay Ay heads home and returns her red cap to its place. “Those are the only three or four hours when we are all there, chirping like birds, saying what we want, things like ‘Catch this!,’ ‘Do this!,’ ‘Do that!,’ and ‘Hit it hard!,’ ” the team’s shortstop, Mirna May Tuyub, told the filmmaker.
Las Diablillas don’t just play-they let loose, spinning, laughing, dancing, singing, and whistling. After winning an early game, they were offered uniforms, but they turned them down for the comfort of wearing everyday clothes. They fist-bump skillfully and high-five often, saying “ Dale!” and “We won!” But what is most important is that they continue to play, running barefoot, unencumbered in their traditional huipils, a loose-fitting tunic worn by their mothers and grandmothers, and hand-stitched with beautiful, intricate designs of flowers in red and purple and pink and blue. They run with huge smiles on their faces to catch a ball or tag one another out. “The men are gradually accepting it,” Ay Ay told me.
LITTLE DEVILS INSIDE PROFESSIONAL
(Despite the national women’s team finishing fourth in the world last year, there is no professional women’s softball league in Mexico.) Many husbands and fathers who once criticized them now come out to support the team. Las Diablillas practice twice a week and travel around the region to compete in “friendlies” with other women’s teams. It was at their first tournament out of town that they came up with their name, which means “the Little Devils,” a nod to their rebellion. The members of Las Diablillas, she said, are women “whose equal rights are violated daily because of the ingrained culture, not necessarily maliciousness.” When they first went out to play, they were insulted and told that they would bring bad luck to the community. But she became focussed on women like Ay Ay after reading a memoir by Eufrosina Cruz, the first Indigenous woman to chair the state congress of Oaxaca. She expertly palms softballs and selects which bats to bring to practice, then yells her goodbyes back into the house.įajardo, a native of Tijuana, Mexico, and a video producer at The New Yorker, noted that gender inequality is a constant presence in rural Mexico. At that moment, she plucks a red cap emblazoned with “Diablillas” from a post and fastens it under her ponytail. But, “over time, you realize that your role might be bigger,” Ay Ay, who is thirty-eight, says. Until a few years ago, her life was like that of any married woman in her community: long days of housework, child rearing, and sewing. “Through our blood runs the blood of the Maya,” she says in “Las Diablillas: The Maya Rebels,” Melissa Fajardo’s documentary about the team. Ay Ay was born and raised in Hondzonot, Mexico, a small Indigenous community in the Yucatán Peninsula. She prepares breakfast for her family each morning, patting tortillas made with corn from nearby fields and warming them on a griddle. Home to the Museum of Islamic Art, testimony to the multi-ethnicity of the medieval Palermo, contains a curious fresco known as “The Devils of the Zisa”, a protection of its rich treasure inside.Juana Ay Ay, the captain of Las Diablillas softball team, gently cracks an egg against the side of a table and mixes it with greens cooking over an open fire. Inside halls for court events, various festivals and shows as well as beautiful rooms decorated in Arabic style, the most famous of which is certainly the central hall featuring elegant mosaic and a fountain in the center. All the real buildings located within this large park were surrounded by beautiful gardens, irrigated and adorned with fountains and large tanks, also used as fish ponds. Originally situated in the Genoardo park (heaven on earth), the Zisa palace was used as Solatium Regio, especially during the summer months, being equipped with a special natural ventilation system that allowed maintaining a cool temperature inside the rooms, especially during the days of sirocco. Influenced by their predecessors, the Norman kings wanted rich and sumptuous residences such as those of the emirs and organized the court life on the Arabic model, adopting its ceremonial and customs. So it was called by the Arabs when it was built under the reign of William II and it is one of the most important examples of Arab-Norman art in Sicily.
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